Author Archives: Andy Daer

Andy Daer

Now it’s the Israeli state versus Greta Thunberg

By Andy Daer | Tue 10th June 2025 - 10:00 am

As I write, Greta Thunberg and eleven other pro-Palestine activists intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters are being transported to Israel, where they will be shown videos of the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th 2023. What this is intended to achieve is a mystery, but maybe the Israeli authorities think Greta and her fellow peace campaigners will decide that Israel has a right to tear up humanitarian law while it takes its revenge on Gaza, and stop complaining. Events may have moved on by the time you read this, but I don’t think we will have seen the shutting up of Greta Thunberg.

No precise figures are available, but it’s widely accepted that the numbers add up to at least 100 Gazans who have been killed or injured in revenge for each of the Israeli civilians killed by Hamas on that day, and with many bodies still to be recovered, the number of dead, let alone those injured, orphaned or who’ve pulled their dead children from the rubble, could be as high as 80,000. And the death toll is still mounting, with daily bombings adding to the effects of the starvation policy introduced three months ago by Israel.

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Andy Daer

Top lawyers challenge the government on Gaza

By Andy Daer | Thu 29th May 2025 - 2:54 pm

Today, a letter signed by 828 lawyers was sent to the British government. UK Judges’ and Lawyers’ Open Letter Concerning the Occupied Palestinian Territory – May 2025 – UK lawyers’ open letter concerning Gaza

As has been noted previously in Lib Dem Voice, and as the lawyers who signed the letter have now stated, the British government needs to take action, not merely voice concern, or issue threats of “concrete” action which so far have come to nothing.  Keir Starmer and David Lammy both suddenly sounded statesman-like when they unveiled those threats, prompted, it appears, not by the nearly 20 months of disproportionate reaction to the October 7 attack by Hamas, but more likely by the televised images of starving babies which might be prompting the British electorate to ask why we are still supplying arms to Israel, and why we haven’t imposed sanctions.

The call from such a huge number of top lawyers and legal experts for positive action is something the government can’t ignore, and indeed it’s hard to see why the Attorney General, Lord Richard Hermer, hasn’t either demanded a change of course, or resigned.  Not long ago David Lammy refused to comment on whether Genocide was taking place in Gaza, saying that wasn’t for a matter for the Foreign Secretary, and was for lawyers to decide.  Lammy graduated from Harvard Law School in 1997, and may have forgotten that he is a lawyer himself, but it seems astonishing that he didn’t seek guidance from the Attorney General, or that if he did, Lord Hermer’s opinion has been kept secret from Parliament and the British public.  No doubt the Labour government, exactly like the Conservatives who preceded them, regards embarrassing legal advice as best kept secret.

The Israeli/American plan to distribute food in Gaza, by-passing normal aid agencies

This has failed to achieve its own very limited objectives, to no-one’s surprise.  Meanwhile the UN’s Office for the  Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) tells us there are 171,000 tons of food embargoed by the Israelis, which could be safely delivered by humanitarian agencies, and which would feed the entire population of Gaza for three to four months.  Instead there is a botched attempt by distrusted private security firms, amid fear that the plan is to kettle Palestinians in the south of Gaza using food as bait, or worse, to lure people known or thought to be associated with Hamas into the arms of the IDF.

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Andy Daer

When will we impose sanctions on Israel ?

By Andy Daer | Fri 9th May 2025 - 10:03 am

For years, many of us have been asking what it would take for the British government to officially recognise Palestine – in order to delegitimise the Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, and usher in the end of the territorial ambitions of Israel’s far-right.  Well, now we know it’s not Israel bombing Gaza flat in a lethal campaign involving deliberately targeting schools, universities and hospitals, killing tens of thousands of civilians including humanitarian workers, ignoring and disrespecting the UN and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and adding starvation as a war tactic.  The current British government has responded to the Gaza war with the usual evasions and denials.

And yet it was Great Britain which told the League of Nations when we took responsibility for Palestine after World War I that delivering a fair outcome for all the peoples of Mandate Palestine was “a sacred duty for Civilisation”.  Although the passage of time has dimmed that memory for us, it understandably hasn’t dimmed it for the generations of Palestinians who have lived under what Amnesty International calls a system of “oppression” and “apartheid”.  Israeli historian Ilan Pappe long ago called the West Bank an open prison, and Gaza a closed prison.

The key sticking point now is whether or not the destruction of Gaza and its people constitutes genocide.  If the UK government admits that Israel’s actions in Gaza seem like genocide it will be obliged, under the Genocide Convention, to act to stop it, and because of that, Foreign Secretary David Lammy has stood up in the House of Commons and said categorically that he does not recognise what is happening as genocide.

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Andy Daer

The responsibility of Parliament to act on the Gaza War

By Andy Daer | Wed 23rd April 2025 - 3:19 pm

Following World War II, in which tens of millions of non-combatants were deliberately targeted and killed, internationally agreed laws were drawn up to safeguard civilians in future conflicts.  A heavy responsibility was laid on signatories, first to ensure that their own forces didn’t commit the newly specified war crimes, and second to take action to prevent others from doing so.  Sadly, the Israeli military action in Gaza since late 2023 has shown that the noble aspirations Great Britain solemnly signed up to have vanished into the ether.  Israel’s retaliation after the Hamas attack has turned into a one-sided slaughter which has been horrific to watch and has involved multiple breaches of humanitarian law.

The idea that the UK has had no power to stop the killing destruction in Gaza is totally false.  We could have ended verbal support and military assistance to Israel in November 2023, when it first became clear that for many of Israel’s military leaders the real target was the Palestinian people of Gaza, not Hamas.  We could, and should, have followed that up with sanctions – imposed not on a few of the West Bank settlers, but on the whole of Israel.  Such action by the British would have been welcomed and imitated by France, Spain and Ireland, putting pressure on the rest of Europe to follow suit.

Although it may seem too late, we can still do this now.  With Trump in the White House, those who feared challenging Biden’s US position have a much easier question to answer: do we want to be seen to side with Trump’s America and support a genocidal land-grab by Israel, or is it in our own interest to dissociate ourselves from it ?  Not only would we be doing right by the Palestinians, but a European refusal to continue supporting Israel would put Trump in a difficult position.  He might feel he had to follow our lead, but if he didn’t, the American public would find themselves isolated as supporters of what will very likely be officially declared a genocide; home support for Trump could be damaged as a result, which would be another win for the action I’m proposing.  

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Andy Daer

There are ways to achieve peace in the Middle East

By Andy Daer | Thu 7th November 2024 - 9:33 am

Many Israelis think they face ‘annihilation’ by Iran and their proxies, and that this means their wars in Gaza and Lebanon fall outside the boundaries set by the international rules of war.  The fear of annihilation didn’t come out of nowhere, but although there has been some fiery rhetoric about Israel’s right to exist over the years, Iran doesn’t seriously believe it could destroy Israel, especially given that it’s backed by the US.  The ‘existential’ distress Israelis feel is more likely an expression of the deep insecurity affecting many Jews around the world, and it originates not from their treatment by Arabs or Iranians, but from centuries of racial abuse and persecution in Europe.  Understanding and accepting this as the underlying cause of the unrestrained assaults on Gaza and Lebanon ought to be fundamental to the peace process.

As things stand, Israel’s Prime Minister won’t listen to calls for restraint, even from the UN or international courts, not because he is mad, or is fighting to stave off corruption charges, or is bent on destroying hopes for a two-state solution, but because he knows that many Israelis think they are in fight for their survival, which on their view means all the normal rules go out of the window.

The fear of annihilation touches a deep place in the human psyche.  When psychoanalysts discuss the war in Gaza they speak of paranoia brought on by Israelis never being allowed to forget the Holocaust, and how that can make them seek refuge in feelings of omnipotence.  The feeling of omnipotence is a delusional state of mind, but it must have been a very seductive delusion to fall back on after the  horrific Hamas attack on October 7 last year.

Most outside observers judge the Israeli response to the threat from Hamas as having been wildly disproportionate, and think it has strayed far beyond its initial purpose – retaliation (or perhaps revenge) for the killing of so many Israeli civilians.  To most of us it’s clear that Netanyahu could end the war in Gaza and Lebanon and get the remaining hostages back simply by giving up on the idea of an enlarged ‘Greater Israel’ and conceding that the Palestinians have a right to their homeland in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.  Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah have all said as much – that they would stop attacking Israel if it agreed to end the Occupation.  Jordan’s envoy to the UN has gone further and said the Arab states of the Middle East would guarantee Israel’s security if it ended the bombardment of Gaza and backed the two-state solution.

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Andy Daer

The failure to defeat Hamas

By Andy Daer | Thu 16th May 2024 - 5:25 pm

As was confidently predicted by military experts in the days following October 7, Israel has not destroyed Hamas by invading Gaza, and it’s clearly not going to.  Despite having to re-engage with Hamas in the previously “cleared” northern Gaza, it has started to inflict further suffering on the one and a half million people seeking refuge in Rafah, in what Netanyahu says is the final stage of clearing Gaza of Hamas fighters.  He knows most of the people are civilians, and that many are women or children, but he has no other plan, and would probably have seen the collapse of the fragile coalition he leads if he hadn’t pressed ahead.  He may be hoping that if “finishing the job” won’t entirely get rid of Hamas, it may end up inflicting sufficient revenge on the people of Gaza for him to remain in office.

International condemnation of the proposed attack on Rafah was led by US President Joe Biden, and initially echoed by the British government, but although Biden has now sent a message to Netanyahu by halting the supply of bombs which are too big to be used in urban warfare, when the Rafah phase began, British government spokesmen became suddenly silent.  As with Biden after his conversion to limited respect for international law, our government is driven by domestic politics, and Sunak may prefer to avoid the inevitable humiliation of being rebuffed by Netanyahu by keeping quiet about the invasion of Rafah.  Others might say he has been influenced by lobbying groups which support Netanyahu’s Israel unconditionally.

In November last year, the inept James Cleverly was replaced as Foreign Secretary by David Cameron, and we saw a welcome shift in the government’s position on Gaza.  Lord Cameron had one last chance to salvage his reputation before he disappeared from the political arena, and he quickly made the bold announcement that when the fighting ends, the ‘two-state solution’ will have to be a given, and on the table before peace talks begin, not as the prize for Palestinians at the end of the process, if they behaved themselves.  Unusually, the British seemed to have made a foreign policy decision which diverged from the US position, although cynics would say Cameron probably had behind the scenes permission from the Americans to do so.  However, when Israel crossed what had been a “red line” by attacking Rafah, the line was suddenly no longer red, and Cameron was no longer laying down the law to Netanyahu, his brief day in the sun having come to an abrupt end.

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Andy Daer

What’s the future for Israel and Palestine?

By Andy Daer | Wed 20th December 2023 - 12:55 pm

It is now more than two months since the Hamas attack in southern Israel, and the bombing and shelling of Palestinians in Gaza continues.  Many of us have marched in support of a cease-fire, but the marches have achieved nothing, so it must be time for a rethink.

The horrific, murderous the attack on October 7 had its roots in Palestinian resentment, and arguably the seeds were planted by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour’s decision during the First World War to donate part of a foreign country we didn’t own to a people who’d suffered abuse and discrimination in Europe for hundreds of years and wanted somewhere to go that wasn’t Europe.  

Others say the current conflict in Gaza is simply the consequence of Hamas behaving “like animals” on October 7.  There are proximal causes and more deep-seated ones, some of which go back a very long way – for some Jewish fundamentalists the claim to ownership of Judea and Samaria goes back thousands of years.   Many other more recent factors are involved, like the funding of Hamas by Qatar (among other countries) and the funding of Israel by the US, which have made the Palestinians pawns in a game driven by the geopolitical ambitions of others.     

What is being lost in the debate over which part of history is most important is the fate of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and increasingly in the West Bank, with bombs falling, bullets flying, and starvation and disease now gaining hold.  Since October 7, more than 20,000 people have been killed, upward of 50,000 injured, and hostages are being held.  Around two million people in Gaza are living in a devastated waste land, short of water, food, electricity, shelter, medical aid, and hope that the world will do anything to alleviate their suffering. 

If the world community is going to move on from simply grandstanding, the obvious first requirement is an end to the fighting.  Calling for Israel to stop hasn’t worked, but if we think that only Israel has the power to end the war we are missing an important point.  Israel has said it won’t stop until Hamas is defeated or surrenders, so the sooner Hamas lays down its arms the better.

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Andy Daer

A Way Out of the Chaos in Israel

By Andy Daer | Mon 3rd April 2023 - 3:13 pm

Joe Biden has lost patience with Benjamin Netanyahu.

Previous US Presidents must have been exasperated by the succession of Israeli Prime Ministers who paid lip service to international law, UN resolutions and human rights, and then ignored them in practice, but this time the frustration is public. Netanyahu is no longer welcome in the White House, and Biden has told him he must end his attempt to destroy democracy in Israel. Jewish organisations like Yachad in the UK have demonstrated around the world that Israel’s leader must not be allowed to join the autocrats’ club, along with Putin, Erdogan and Orban. In stark contrast to Biden, the UK government kowtowed to Netanyahu only days before the US condemnation of his latest moves, and has published what must now be a deeply embarrassing ‘roadmap’; it ticks off virtually everything on Netanyahu’s wish-list.

Netanyahu’s initial response to Biden’s announcement was to say Israel could manage without US help, and to call on his supporters to stage counter-demonstrations opposing those seen over the last few recent weeks. Tens of thousands have shown their disapproval of the planned legal reforms, both in Israel and in cities around the world. The truth is that Israel needs its friends more than ever, and dismissing Biden’s call to end his attack on the Israeli judiciary was a mistake.

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Andy Daer

There must be no whitewash over Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing

By Andy Daer | Tue 14th June 2022 - 2:15 pm

The shameful killing of 51 year-old Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh happened a month ago. Most likely she was shot by an Israeli sniper, with initial claims by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) that a stray Palestinian bullet might have hit her having been largely discredited.  An Israeli investigation is under way, but has provided no answers yet.

A human tragedy for her family and the Palestinian people, Abu Akleh’s killing follows that of Jamal Khashoggi, callously dispatched by Saudi Arabia in 2018, and according to the Palestinian Authority, the deaths of 45 other Palestinian journalists killed since 2000.  

If we don’t yet know for sure that an IDF soldier shot her, we do know what happened the following day.  Her funeral was disrupted in an astonishing display of disrespect by the Israeli State.  Palestinian flags are not illegal in Jerusalem, but Israeli law allows police to seize flags displayed in places where they might lead to violence.  The flags on Abu Akleh’s coffin did indeed lead to violence.  It was perpetrated by an angry mob of Israeli Police, who aggressively waded into the crowd, hitting people with wooden batons, including those carrying the coffin. 

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Andy Daer

Department for International Trade calls for consultation over a new trade deal with Israel

By Andy Daer | Sat 26th March 2022 - 6:52 pm

The UK is Israel’s third largest trading partner, but Israel is well down the list for the UK, at about sixtieth.  However, our current trade agreement with Israel is the old European Union one, amended by inserting UK instead of EU, and the Department for International Trade (DIT) wants to upgrade the deal to “something more ambitious.”

Liberal Democrats at last September’s Conference also called for better trade ties with Israel, but they did so with a very important caveat.  They wanted to have a better trading relationship with Israel and also to observe international law, by banning trade in any goods or services from the settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).  The settlements are, of course, illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention (4GC), and so is trading with them.

International Law has in recent times been more honoured in the breach than the observance, and the war in Ukraine has reminded us how necessary it is to get important fundamental principles agreed across the globe, and to make sure everyone abides by them.  Signatories to the Geneva Conventions are not abiding by international law if they trade with businesses operating illegally in the OPT.

The DIT is seeking views from interested parties about how the new deal should be shaped, via this link:.  It gives us all an opportunity to say we want to put international law back in its rightful place, at the front and centre of international relations.

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Andy Daer

Violence in Israel and Palestine – Layla Moran’s Urgent Question

By Andy Daer | Thu 13th May 2021 - 3:34 pm

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The Urgent Question put by Layla Moran in Parliament yesterday exposed the gulf between government rhetoric and any attempt to deal with the real causes of the horrific violence unleashed in Gaza and elsewhere in Israel and Palestine over the past few days.  Asked time and again for the government’s response, James Cleverly told the House the government was ‘urging restraint’ on both sides.  Layla’s call for clarity on questions like support for UN Security Council resolutions was met with the bland response the government would be trying to “encourage an end to the violence”.  Asked by Layla when would be the time to recognise the state of Palestine, if not now, Cleverly just ignored the question.

The spark which ignited the current wave of violence was the proposed illegal evictions in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, and it was Conservative MP Crispin Blunt who challenged Cleverly to spot the difference between the UK’s response to that and its response 25 years ago to illegal settlements in Har Homa.  Cleverly replied that “the UK’s position on settlements is of long standing,” unintentionally making Blunt’s point for him.  What we did in the past had no effect, and we intend to keep doing it.

Underlining the futility of the Cleverly’s assurances that we have strong diplomatic ties with Israel and can have a “powerful” influence, Benny Gantz, the Israeli defence minister, has announced that “we will not listen to moral preaching against our duty to protect the citizens of Israel”, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says “we will inflict blows on (Hamas) that they couldn’t even dream of.”  The British government calls for restraint and a proportionate response, and Israeli ministers proudly announce they are not listening.  The disproportionate response the IDF boasts of carrying out in Gaza is explicitly outlawed under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and constitutes a war crime.

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Andy Daer

COP26 will fail unless we grant it the powers of a supra-national council

By Andy Daer | Thu 4th February 2021 - 4:08 pm

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H.G. Wells’ ‘end of the world’ fantasy saw civilisation saved by a friendly virus, but in 1951 a new type of apocalyptic fantasy appeared in cinema screens.  In The Day the Earth Stood Still humanity was given an ultimatum: put aside petty squabbles and come together, or be annihilated.  Michael Rennie’s authoritarian ‘alien’ was clearly a depiction of human reason triumphing over the insanity of armed conflict, and the film reflected the founding principle of the United Nations; endless wars were the problem the human race faced.

We are now living the reality, and the problem isn’t wars.  We face the end not only of human civilisation but of much of the natural world, and one of the millions of species headed for extinction could be our own.  However, the message of hope from 1951 is as powerful as it was then.  By uniting behind a single purpose, the concerted efforts of the human race could overcome the challenges we face.  We don’t have the stern, but kind-hearted, alien laying down the law, so what we need instead is a world council tasked with creating a survival plan, and empowered to enforce it.

We already have the UN, but that was created after the horrors of World War II, and felt its first duty was to render impossible future invasions and annexations, so its founders sought to guarantee the sovereign right of countries to be free from the fear of invasion.  Individual national sovereignty is an idea which is now hopelessly out of date, and it has become positively harmful.

Climate summit meetings still accept that each country has a right to act as it will within its own borders.  They try to achieve consensus about what each can realistically do about climate change, but those that don’t want to sign up don’t have to.  Sovereignty is a meaningless luxury when the damage to the environment affects the entire world, and sovereignty was probably always a delusion (Imagined Communities,  Benedict Anderson, 1983), with the lines on today’s maps mostly just the residue of past wars and arranged marriages.

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Andy Daer

Our promise to the Palestinians

By Andy Daer | Thu 28th May 2020 - 6:49 pm

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Britain appointed itself the ruling power in Palestine after the First World War mainly because it suited British geopolitical ambitions, but our government solemnly acknowledged a “sacred duty” to safeguard the rights of all the people of Palestine when British rule ended.  However, in 1948, Britain, bankrupted by World War II and dealing with the collapse of its empire, forgot its promise to the  Palestinians, and left them to their own devices.  The Jewish state of Israel was created in roughly the part of Mandate Palestine designated by the United Nations, and the rest was ceded to Egypt and Jordan.

This all changed after the 1967 war, in which the Israeli army overran large parts of neighbouring countries.  The areas they occupied when the fighting stopped were effectively the parts of Mandate Palestine which Israel had been unable to claim when it was created in 1948.  Continued military occupation is allowed in the immediate aftermath of a war, but occupied territory must be handed back, and permanent settlement by people from the conquering power is illegal.

Despite that, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and part of southern Syria immediately in June 1967, and have remained as an occupying military power in the West Bank and Gaza until the present day, some 53 year later.  During that time the Palestinians have struggled to have their rights recognised, mostly through peaceful protest and negotiations sponsored by third parties.  Some have resorted to violence, and there have been acts of terrorism, particularly in the early days of the PLO.  The Israeli response is usually disproportionate retaliation, based on the idea that ‘collective punishment’ means violent protest rebounds on the local community.  Collective punishment is illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which was ratified by virtually every country in the world, including Israel, but like the illegal settlements, it has been tolerated by the world community for decades, and rarely generates more than mild rebukes.

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Andy Daer

A trip to Palestine

By Andy Daer | Tue 6th August 2019 - 8:57 am

The racial profiling had gone a bit wrong.  We’d been walking along al Shuhada, a street in Hebron which is strictly off-limits for Palestinians, flanked by some nervous-looking Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers, when one of them demanded to see some ID.  He’d picked one our small group of British Lib Dems who was obviously of Indian origin.  Our Israeli guide, ex-IDF himself, gently reminded the young soldier that as ‘internationals’ we had rights not granted to Palestinians.

Our trip to Palestine earlier this year lasted only six days, but as well as Hebron, we visited Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, some outlying villages and towns, a Bedouin settlement threatened with demolition (but still there today), and a refugee camp for internally displaced people.  You can’t learn everything about a country in such a short time, but whatever you read or see in the media, there is no substitute for being there and meeting the people.  We were warmly received by the Palestinians we met – unsurprisingly, given that our (Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine) stated aim is to campaign for the rights of Palestinians, although it is maybe just a little surprising when you consider the past role of the British, exemplified by the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and our hasty departure from Palestine in 1948.

The context for our journey was provided on day one, at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).  As well as working to improve the lot of the Palestinians, they collect data on casualty numbers on both sides of the ongoing conflict, and they showed us on a series of maps the steady decrease in the land occupied by Palestinians, due to the illegal (under international law) settlements in the ‘Occupied Territories’.  

The West Bank and Gaza were overrun by the IDF in a brief war more than fifty years ago, but are still subject to martial law.  We visited Military Court Watch, which independently monitors court proceedings when the accused are young Palestinians (under 18).  Typically, the charge is throwing stones at settlers, for which the penalty is usually several months in prison.  Around 200 children were in Israeli prisons when we were there; military courts operate differently from civil courts, and although evidence is not always available, the conviction rate is 99%. 

Sometimes our guides were Israeli Jews who were out of step with the current right-wing Israeli government, and they and their Palestinian counterparts impressed us with their calm determination to see their land freed from conflict.  One thing they all stressed was the effectiveness of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign.  The views and support of the outside world really matter.

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Andy Daer

Countering the fear factor

By Andy Daer | Mon 6th November 2017 - 4:19 pm

Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers who rarely met anyone they didn’t know, and were probably wise to be cautious when they did. In modern cities we are used to seeing strangers by the thousand, but our genetic inheritance is still there, and it is easy to re-awaken the atavistic fear that people who look or sound different might be dangerous. Stirring up racism is part of a simple principle of leadership; tell people there is an external threat and set yourself up as a powerful and angry leader. If the people fear the external threat they will welcome an aggressive masterful …

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Andy Daer

Giving voice to the millions who didn’t vote in the Referendum

By Andy Daer | Fri 27th October 2017 - 1:30 pm

What happened to the 11.9 million who didn’t vote in the referendum last year?  According to the pro-Brexit lobby’s version of ‘democracy’ they no longer exist.

Non-voters may have been unregistered, uninterested, or too busy to pop in the polling station, and others reckoned their single vote would never matter much and didn’t bother, but there is a core who were confused by the lies and misinformation and didn’t know which way to turn, after a campaign that was shoddy on both sides.

In the last few months the effects of the Brexit vote have started to become clearer.  The pound immediately lost value, banks and other financial institutions are starting to move to other European countries, there are big doubts about the future of aero-space and our foreign-owned car industry, EU citizens are already leaving and creating labour shortages in key industries and services, anti-foreigner rhetoric is making the UK an unfriendly xenophobic place, and forecasts predict a long-lasting downturn in the economy, causing tax revenue reductions which would far outweigh the mythical £350m a week gain.  Brexit champions thrived on stirring up anti-EU feelings but had no plan for the future, apart from a low-tax, low-tariff Poundshop Britain which would horrify most of us, including leave voters.  They had boasted we could easily do advantageous deals with economic super-powers like the USA and China, but the reality is stark; trade agreements take years to negotiate, and we would come off worst in deals with ‘America first’ USA and the equally self-centred China.

Despite all this, the Brexiters claim another referendum would be “anti-democratic”, because “the people have spoken.”  We all seem to be forgetting that 11.9 million didn’t speak.  

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